Name: James T. Gonida Assignment No.

: 2

ID No.:

109932

_________________________________________________________________________ Part 1: A summary of the symposium on "Forefront and Challenges of Water Resources Management in Southeast Asia". Last Saturday, 29th of January 2011, a symposium was conducted in Bangkok with a theme on the forefront and challenges of water resources management in Southeast Asia. I was one of the lucky students who were able to attend the symposium and gain some knowledge and insights on the current situation of water resources in Southeast Asia (SEA), with a more focus on the Mekong River Basin (MRB). In the symposium, various issues were brought up and all six (6) speakers shared various viewpoints and research results that help the participants to understand the challenges that need forefront attention and solution. Ms. Nativadee Manitkul of Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) of Thailand spoke about the Mekong sub-regional framework - opportunities and challenges. In her presentation, she discussed the strategic location of Thailand in SEA. What interests me most in her presentation was the topic on the emerging of subregion frameworks, which consists of GMS, ACMECS, IMT-GT, BIMSTEC, Mekong-Japan, USLower Mekong, Mekong-Korea, where Thailand's participation is always present in the inception of all these frameworks. From her presentation, she mentioned that these frameworks promote narrow development gap; create income and growth; increase infrastructure connectivity, and promote border trade and investment. On the other hand, Dr. Mukand S. Babel of Asian Institute and Technology (AIT), timely presented the results of a study on the "Vulnerability Assessment of Freshwater Resources in the Mekong River Basin". His presentation was very straightforward and interesting. He presented and explained the key questions behind the aforesaid study, which encompasses the vulnerability of the Mekong water resources, contributors to its vulnerability, and the possible change of the vulnerability considering space and time. He clearly explained the conceptual framework that was adopted in the study, which revolves on the question on how would vulnerability change under various circumstances. He also explained the steps being followed in the assessment, which cover subjects on Water Resources Status, Key Issues (i.e. seasonality, quality, etc.,), and Comprehensive Status that include Resource Stress, Ecological insecurity, among others. The study concludes that the Mekong River Basin (MRB) is still in good condition toward the realization of sustainable water resources management, and as of the moment as the study was concluded, no water shortages or open conflicts have been found. He also cited one very interesting finding that vulnerability of MRB is most related to lack of management capacity and to a lesser extent on development pressure. The third speaker, Mr. Chaiporn Siripornpibul of the Department of Water Resources in Thailand, shared about "Water resources management in MRC and Thailand's perspectives in MRC's role". One interesting topic that he presented was on the formulation of Basin Development Plan (BDP), which adopts the principles of Integrated Water

Resources Management (IWRM), and envisions to achieve a balance between socioeconomic development and environmental concerns. Also, Thailand's perspective on Mekong River Committee (MRC) offers valuable solutions for the effectiveness of the role of MRC in addressing the problems currently faced by the basin. Interestingly, Perspective 14 expresses a good value that each member countries should possess - the sense of ownership. It is a common attitude that once we claim ownership with one thing, we would surely take care of it. Speaker 4, Prof. Sucharit Koontanakulvong of Chulalongkorn University, presented a result to one of his studies about "Integrating Provincial/Community Water Planning with Provincial Development Plan by area based information system". He described in his presentation how the above-mentioned project and information system was developed by giving the nature of the problem, the issues being considered, and the research concept. It is interesting to note that his study utilized the GIS/MIS information. He identified also the lessons learned in the project, saying that mapping technology helps in planning process and identified that capacity building is a key success factor. Speaker 5, Prof. Peter Rogers, really caught my attention. I can say, he is a man with rich in experience, as he talked simultaneously once a question is asked. His views on the lapses of the MRC made me think of the same situation that some of our local river basin committees in the Philippines are confronting with. Indeed, it is a fact that river basin committees are overpowered by some political agenda, making the committees' vision, mission, and goal being impaired by some personal and political interest. It is also indeed an interesting thing to note on how Prof. Rogers viewed the causes for a lesser development in the MRB. He pointed some reasons such as: French colonialism, independence and war, and Asian financial crisis, which I thought were very crucial in gaining the stakeholders interest and support. The last but not the least speaker, Prof. Suzanne Ogden, shared many critical views on the challenges to benefit sharing in the MRB. She pointed 12 challenges to a scientific calculation for sharing benefits in the MRB. It is worth to note the observations that Prof. Ogden shared, saying that some of the challenges are related to complexities in the data and understanding of river basins, ecological and environmental concerns, and to some extent, the institutional framework for the basin. The bottomline, Prof. Ogden said that one challenge that might be a crucial part to the entire solution of the problem at MRB is the development of infrastructure that leads to more benefits. Indeed, the symposium was packed with overflowing source of new knowledge, which researchers and other practitioners would really find vital in dealing with assessment and research as far as the forefront and challenges of water resources management in SEA are concerned. Part 2: What are the current problems in water resources management and EIA in the Mekong? The current problems in water resources management and EIA in the Mekong can be summarized in two important areas. One is finding the balance between supply and demand

and second, the proper allocation of water for livelihood, for international trade, for electricity/energy, and for biodiversity. According to the MRC (2010), urbanization is already a trend in the four Lower Mekong Basin countries, where people migrate to look for opportunities in urban centers. With this trend, the demand for electricity and drinking water is increasing coupled with the increase in the living standards. To achieve this, more dams must be constructed to impound more water for this purpose. However, MRC report also said that the Mekong Basin is one of the richest areas of biodiversity in the world and also one of the most threatened. Knowing this, it is then very difficult to find the balance against the potential impacts of human and infrastructure development to the environment/ecosystem and to the people's livelihood. Part 3: How can geospatial technology be utilized to solve problems? Geospatial technology can be utilized to solve these problems through the development of relative management application systems for the researchers, agencies, government, and stakeholders to use in finding appropriate solutions to a particular problem, like data and information on spatial queries for flood calculation, debris flow location, display DEM charts, contaminant transport, among others. The utilization of the geospatial technology to solve societal problems such as disasters, health, and climate change is a must now, given the complexities of the interactions between several key factors that cause the problems. These threats should need timely, quality, longterm, global information as a basis for good decision making, which could be possible through the efforts to collect data, use satellite, and remote sensing technologies for data collection and to access, explore and use geographic information (UN, 2009). In the case of the problems in the MRB, geospatial technologies can be utilized in modeling the extent of the effect on varying land-use, increased population, drought and winter scenarios, impact of water developing projects, among others.

References: Kawasaki, A., Manitkul, N., Babel, M., Siripornpibul, C., Kootanakulvong, S., Rogers, P., and Ogden, S. (2011, January 29). Papers and presentation notes presented at Seminar 2011 - Forefront and challenges of water resources management in Southeast Asia. Bangkok, Thailand. MRC. (2010). State of the basin report 2010 summary. Retrieved January 26, 2011, from http://www.mrcmekong.org/free_download/State-of-the-Basin-Report.htm. UN. (2009, October 26-29). Geospatial technologies to reach the millennium development goals. Paper presented at Eighteenth United Nations Regional Cartographic Conference for Asia and Pacific. Bangkok, Thailand.